Embodied Historiography: Rupture as the performance of history

Embodied historiography is the practice of regarding performers as documents that are meant to be historically read and accounted for, in which the act of performance exposes our subjective processing of memory and historical events through the live layering of multiple perspectives. The Veterans Project is an ongoing work of embodied historiography in which veterans of the American military appear onstage in an unscripted forum where they are invited to share their stories. However, the individual narratives that emerge are in turn consistently interrupted/disrupted through the utilization of an evolving media system, inspired in large part by the work of Vilém Flusser that interjects various video, audio, and graphic media into the conversation. By consciously interrupting and thereby rupturing the narratives that each individual soldier has crafted with respect to his or her own historical framing of memory, we resist political teleology in both historiography and performance. The experience of these ruptures by the audience ultimately opens space for the contemporary experience of art that was promised by the historical avant-garde before becoming historical. By examining the framing, rehearsal, performance, and aftermath of The Veterans Project as it was recently staged in Phoenix, Arizona, a focal point for some of the most contentious ongoing political debates in the United States, we outline a methodology for embodied historiography in this article that can be leveraged within other fields of knowledge for the purpose of experiencing art.
The time I spent in the army – a good portion of that time was spent was in Southeast Asia. And I worked with professional soldiers. I was the youngest one on our team – most of them were in their late 20s and early 30s, most of them had had multiple – multiple tours, and, ah, there were a couple of my teammates who had wives in both countries. And so they just – went back and forth. They'd do twelve months here, and maybe eight months there, and twelve months here, and ten months there, but they had two families. In fact we had some children, their – a couple of their kids, living in our base camp. Which we didn't – we didn't spend a whole lot of time there. But, ah, it was just a given that these professional soldiers at Ft. Bragg, coming and going, it was – it was part of the landscape. It, ah, didn't make it right, but it was known and understood and, um, kind of accepted.